Heartbeat
by Mango Marbles
Summary: His heart beat in his chest. Too quickly, too quickly. Pre-series.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Supernatural.

 **A/N:** I found myself in a bit of a rut with my on-going stories, so I sat down and just wrote. This is what came of it. I found a lot of variety in abilities of the Big Bad here when researching it, so I took some creative liberty with it, too, and gave it my own touch.

* * *

His heart beat in his chest. Too quickly, too quickly. Another second, and it would burst from within him. His lungs burned from trying to bring in enough oxygen to fuel his starved muscles.

His name was… Sam. His name was Sam. His name was Sam, and it felt like an eternity had passed since he last breathed fresh air. He didn't remember what it felt like to not have every fiber of his muscles burning in pain and fighting against every movement.

He stumbled through underbrush and branches that had fallen from the trees.

His name was Sam, and his head spun with jumbled thoughts. He remembered being on a hunt.

No, that wasn't quite right. He wasn't supposed to be on the hunt. He'd been sidelined, but that didn't matter. The hunt found him.

 _He bounced his leg on the ball of his foot, staring at a book and pretending that he was reading it with no one there to witness the act. It was difficult to concentrate on anything other than the fact that his father and brother were checking out yet another graveyard or cemetery in the area, inspecting mausoleums for the source of the town's zombie problem._

 _With a sigh, he flipped his book shut and sat on one of the beds, his back against the headboard and his legs stretched out in front of him. The drone of the TV made for decent background noise, but the only channel that had decent reception was the local news, and the only topic they wanted to talk about was the town's problem with the undead. The undead that seemed to target the youth, leading to Sam being sidelined from this hunt._

 _When the temperature dropped and the hairs on his arms stood straight up, he knew that it wasn't his family outside the door. It was something far more dangerous, and all he had that might deal with it was a canister of salt, a silver knife, and a gun loaded with regular, useless bullets._

 _He was pretty sure that the gun would be his best bet against any sort of zombie, but the temperature drop was a tell-tale sign of a spirit. A spirit would be unaffected by bullets, but not by the salt._

 _So, what the hell was he supposed to use in this situation? What kind of hunt had his father dragged him into this time?_

 _He chose the salt because the room was freezing by then, and that was_ not _a zombie on the other side of the door. He just hoped that his decision making wouldn't end with him dead, or joining the undead._

 _The door flew open with enough force to knock it off its hinges, and the room was filled with unnatural gusts of wind. Debris from outside mixed with the loose papers in the room, and Sam had to cover his head with his arms to protect his face._

 _The salt was knocked out of his hand, and he peeked from between his arms to see a robed figure, but the hands sticking out of the sleeves were skeletal, one holding an amulet with a glowing gem._

 _That was not a ghost, and he was fairly certain that it wasn't a zombie either. Or it wasn't a run-of-the-mill zombie._

 _It spoke words that he couldn't understand with a voice that left him paralyzed in its chill._

 _This was how he died, and that was the only thought running through his head as the creature moved closer to him. He couldn't turn away. He couldn't run. His body wasn't responding to him, and the wind blew the bed sheets and his hair as the thing stepped in front of him._

 _He was numb by the time its skeletal hand was placed on the top of his head, then slid down the side to rest on his cheek. He couldn't do as much as breathe as his eyes drooped shut beneath an unbearable weight that wasn't there a second ago._

 _Out of every death he could have faced, why did it have to be this one? Why did his life have to end so soon?_

Sam crouched and leaned against one of the many trees in the area. He didn't know why every graveyard seemed to be on the outskirts of some woods, but he wasn't complaining at the moment.

He wasn't dead, and that was a start. At least, he was pretty sure he wasn't dead. While he felt like death, he didn't feel any sort of peace.

Where did he go from here?

Forwards. He went forwards. If he stopped now, he wouldn't start again. He didn't have the energy left to afford letting his adrenaline wear off, and he knew that most of his life must have been sucked out in the time he was kept in that mausoleum.

How long was he gone? Were Dean and his dad looking for him?

It was possible that they didn't know he was gone at all yet, if he'd been gone for only a matter of hours. He knew that he was gone for longer than that, though. He _had_ to have been gone for longer than a few hours.

He felt like he was there for years, and he wouldn't get answers until he found his family. So, he kept putting one foot in front of the other, hoping that he could put enough distance between that creature and himself to avoid being recaptured.

 _He woke up in darkness, smelling only death and rot to the point that he gagged and dry-heaved until his already empty stomach hurt. He couldn't see his surroundings, so he reached out his hands and felt the area around him. With how heavy his arms felt, he had to let them drop back to his sides after less than a minute._

 _It was so hard to breathe, and it took all of his willpower combined with the training forced upon him throughout most of his life to keep him from panicking and wasting what little oxygen had to be left. If he was right, then he was in a coffin, or something similarly small and enclosed._

 _What else would smell of rot? He was in the graveyard that his dad and Dean had gone to search for, and he wasn't about to think that he was lucky enough that they'd gone to the right one (and how many did the area really need?). Winchester luck didn't work like that._

 _He needed to get out_ now _. No matter how drained he felt, if he didn't find a way to escape, then he would die. He'd already been there long enough if the air was thin enough to make his lungs burn._

 _So, he pushed against the top of his coffin, encouraged by the grinding of stone against stone. First, he moved it enough to the side for a sliver of, well, not light, but a place that had a little more light than a closed coffin. He took a moment to press his face close to that sliver and breathed in oxygen, no longer as bothered by the smell._

 _He'd take breathing in dust and decay over dying._

 _He continued to ride whatever flow of adrenaline his body could pump out and pushed the top of his coffin off far enough to crawl over the side and land unceremoniously on the ground. With shaking limbs and stiff muscles, he pulled himself to his feet and stumbled out of the mausoleum and into the moonlit graveyard beyond it. Since the door was open, he assumed that whatever grabbed him was planning to come back during the night, and he planned to be far, far away before that moment._

 _His mind went blank as he moved, and all he knew was that he needed to get away if he wanted to survive._

By the time he came upon a road, the sun was starting to rise on the golden horizon. They hadn't been in the town for long by then, but it was a series of towns that were so close together, they blended into one. He'd been working on mapping out the disappearances in the area and the location of each graveyard and cemetery, and he was beyond glad that task had fallen to him. It was the only reason he recognized where he was once he walked far enough to find street signs.

It seemed that Winchesters had a little luck. With the sun rising, he figured that the creature would be heading back to the mausoleum to hide for the day. Whatever it was, it sure as hell couldn't walk around in populated areas in daylight.

* * *

He was ready to collapse by the time he reached the motel room, relieved to see the Impala in the parking lot. There was a layer of sweat, dirt, dust, and residue from numerous other unpleasant things coating his skin, clothes, and hair. A hot shower sounded nice, but the creature had done something to him.

He felt… sapped of energy. Drained. His body seemed to think it was still as close to death as it had been when he was running out of oxygen, despite the abundance of it in the air around him. His lungs heaved in as much air as they could, but it was never enough. His heartbeat was audible in his ears, and still quick, but it was slowing. The adrenaline high he'd been riding since he woke up in a coffin inside a mausoleum was wearing off.

The muscles of his arm fought back as he tried to raise it to knock, and the result was him slamming his palm on the door, which looked like it might fall over since it still wasn't properly attached anymore, and hoping that his family would hear him.

The door swung open, and Sam had never been happier to see Dean's angry face.

"Where the hell have you been all night, Sam?" he asked. "We looked everywhere for you when we saw the door had been nearly ripped off."

Dean's voice faded in and out, and he wasn't sure that he was comprehending more than one in three of his words. Dean must have realized that Sam wasn't feeling all that great, because his expression shifted from anger to worry. That much, at least, Sam did notice.

"Sam? Sam, are you okay?"

Sam swayed, and it felt like his body was no longer in his control. As much effort as he put into trying to stay upright, his legs gave out and his vision darkened. He never hit the ground. He felt Dean's arms holding him up, and he heard Dean's increasingly frantic voice.

But he was with his family, and he was finally safe. So, he gave into the weariness enveloping him and slipped into unconsciousness.

* * *

"Sammy?"

Dean.

He felt… better? He didn't feel like he was dying, at least, and he could breathe a little easier. It was like he'd been hibernating, with the blanket of sleepiness continuing to weigh him down and try to lure him back into darkness despite him being plenty rested.

"C'mon, Sam. Wake up."

Usually, Dean sounded annoyed when he had to wake Sam up in the morning (and that wasn't a common occurrence), but he had a different tone this time. It was more cajoling than demanding. Softer, with a hint of concern.

Sam pried his eyes open, uncertain as to why Dean wasn't trying to shake him awake at this point. Was he late for something?

 _His heart beat in his chest, and he felt it, like it was trying to burst out._

He gasped and sat up too quickly, making the world spin.

Dean's hands came to rest on either shoulder and he said, "Whoa, Sam, take it easy. You're okay."

 _The door flew open, coming unhinged, and a robed figure wrapped by unnatural gusts of wind walked in. One skeletal hand came to rest on his head. On his cheek._

"There was… It was here," Sam said.

 _He knew that the wooded area beyond the graveyard was his best bet to hide from the creature that took him and left him trapped in a coffin, so that was where he headed. His breaths were choked, and he doubled over in coughing fits as he got closer to the woods, trying to hack up the dust and debris he inhaled while in the mausoleum._

"And the graveyard. And the coffin, and I…"

Dean was trying to shush him with soft noises, then moved onto shaking him by his shoulders to bring him back to the present.

"We know," he said. "We figured it out, and we figured out that it was a lich, not a zombie. Though, it was creating zombies to serve it. That's what happened to the people who went missing. That's what almost happened to you."

"What?"

"The lich put his victims in a coffin with runes for spellwork engraved on it, and he was draining their lives away so he could bring them back as zombies to serve him. He must have targeted you next, but you got away and made it back here," Dean said. He paused and watched Sam for a moment before adding, "Yeah, it was a lot to take in for me, too, when Dad figured it out with some phone calls to Bobby."

From the moment he woke up in the coffin, he felt like he was dying. Because he _was_ dying, and that made sense now. He'd been so close to dying. He'd been uncomfortably close to becoming something his family would have had to put down, like a rabid animal.

"How?"

"Well, Dad used the information from Bobby along with your maps to find where he was hiding out. I guess he had something that he was storing his soul in for the sake of eternal life, and he was adding the souls of his victims to it so he could control them in the afterlife. I guess it could be used for all sorts of nasty magic," Dean said. "Once that was destroyed, Dad said the thing basically turned to dust. I wasn't there, so you'd have to ask Dad for the more accurate details."

"Where is he?"

Dean looked at the other bed in the motel room, and Sam followed his line of sight to find John sound asleep and snoring, unaware of the world around him.

"It was a tough hunt, but he insisted on doing it alone while I watched you."

"How long?" Sam asked, because the events Dean listed off couldn't have happened in a mere matter of hours.

"You were missing for an entire night, then unconscious for three days. Well, you were in and out of consciousness," Dean said.

Sam let Dean push him back down on the mattress, and as tempting as sleep was, he fought to stay awake just a little longer.

"I woke up in a coffin," Sam said, even though Dean had already mentioned that there was a coffin with runes engraved on it. "I think I almost ran out of oxygen by the time I woke up. The air felt so thin, and it was hard to breathe."

"I'm sorry," Dean said.

Sam continued, "Adrenaline was the only reason I made it out. And if I hadn't been working with mapping the areas of the disappearances, I wouldn't have been able to find my way back to the motel."

"Maybe we should make you memorize the map every time we move," Dean said, but he couldn't quite muster the normal amount of humor into his voice.

"When he broke in, I tried to defend myself, but I had no idea what he was and the wind around him blew everything away."

"You did your best, but I should've been there," Dean said.

"You didn't know."

"Well, I should've known that you'd end up in trouble somehow. You're like a magnet for the supernatural, Sammy."

"Do you ever wonder why?" Sam asked. "What is it about me that attracts evil?"

Dean shrugged, then shook his head. "Just close your eyes, Sammy. Get some rest. You've been through a lot."

Sam followed Dean's order and closed his eyes. He hoped that he would fall into a lighter sleep. A peaceful sleep, unburdened by the weight of a spell designed to drain his life away until he was an undead husk.

"I'm right here, Sammy."

Dean's reassurances eased away any lingering tension, and Sam quickly found himself on the cusp of sleep. The point where he could barely tell if he was awake or dreaming. Fingertips ghosted over his forehead, pushing his hair away from his eyes.

"I won't let anything happen to you," Dean said.

And Sam believed him.

* * *

 **A/N:** Please leave a review!


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